Page 37 of Down Comes the Night

“So. Are you docile today?” she asked as pleasantly as she could manage.

“Yes. Are you?” There was no wryness in it. Only a deep, wrung-out weariness that almost chastened her.

“As much as I ever am,” she muttered. Wren dipped the spoon into the soup and tried not to feel self-conscious as she blew over the surface. Healing any soup-induced blisters would be a ridiculous waste of her magic. As soon as she extended it toward him, he angled his chin away from her like a petulant toddler.

“I can do it myself.”

Hal and his goddessdamned pride. By the end of this ordeal, she swore she’d develop a twitch in her eye. “Be my guest.”

She set the bowl down on the side table hard enough that the broth sloshed over the lip. As he reached for it, Wren watched a single moment unspool into eternity: Hal, uncoordinated from illness, swiping the spoon from its perch; the silver winking as it hung suspended in midair; his mouth twisting into a grimace. Then, in a rush, the spoon clattered to the floor, far too loud in the tense silence of the sickroom.

Hal frowned at the weathered hardwood as if it spanned the bottom of a chasm. She squinted at the reddening tips of his ears.Frustration? Embarrassment?It was such a strangely human thing. So achingly normal, she didn’t care to interrogate it.

With a sigh, Wren bent over and fetched the spoon for him.

He must have moved at the same time because she nearly clocked him in the chin as she came upright. His nightshirt still hung open, the expanse of his chest and the elegant arch of his collarbonesbared only inches from her nose. Close enough that her breath fanned softly against his skin—close enough that she detected the way he shivered. She jerked backward, heat zipping up her neck.

“Uh.” The spoon dangled limply between them. “Here.”

Hal took it from her with a peculiar expression. “Thank you.”

After she passed him the bowl and ascertained he wouldn’t give himself second-degree burns, she distracted herself from the unbearable awkwardness by scribbling notes. What waswrongwith her? Where had her professionalism gone? Hal Cavendish was handsome, assuming one enjoyed the wasting sort of beauty of a dying rose. A completely neutral, observable statement of fact. There. Now she’d thought the unthinkable, she could purge it from her system. It would rise to bother her no longer.

Wren lifted her eyes back to him. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.”

She snorted at the pain in his voice. “It’s healing, not torture. There’s a small difference.”

Hal gave her a doubtful look as he handed her his empty bowl. She set it aside; then, shifting forward in her seat, she placed her hands on his chest and let her magic flow into his body. While he didn’tsayanything about it, he didn’t need to. His clenched jaw and rigid posture spoke volumes.

“It’ll make it easier for both of us if you relax, you know,” Wren said. “If I really wanted you dead, Lowry would already be promenading in his mourning colors. You wanted my help. I’m helping.”

“Fine.”

To her surprise, he did try. As his muscles slackened and his blood pressure lowered, her magic flowed more easily through hisfola.Her awareness spread through his system within minutes, but what she found dismayed her. His condition had deteriorated overnight, as if she hadn’t healed him at all.

It wasn’t possible. No disease could be so aggressive.

She took even breaths to keep herself grounded. No good work arose from frustration, she reminded herself, even as she wantedto scream at the prospect of redoing everything from last night. Mother Heloise’s admonitions still rattled in her head.

Patience, Sister Wren.

It was the refrain of her training, constant and relentless.

You must be patient.In the lab, where she would burn through supplies of herbs testing remedy after remedy. In the infirmary, where Heloise would tut with disapproval when Wren left a faint, ridged scar on one of her Sisters’ arms. On the battlefield, where her outpourings of energy would leave grievous wounds healed but her hands numb for days. The human body could only withstand so much. Time was the greatest healer of them all.

Despite the familiar numbness creeping into her fingers, Wren didn’thavetime. She couldn’t be patient. If she couldn’t treat the worst of his symptoms in the next two weeks, he would die en route to Danu, and she would be tried for desertion.

When she finished healing him, she drew back and clenched her fists until the tendons crackled. Sweat beaded her forehead and the back of her neck, and as the chill of the room descended over her, she shivered against it. “Well. You’re no worse, but you’re certainly no better.”

All the hope he’d managed to hold on to withered before her eyes. “So there’s nothing you can do?”

“I never said that.” Wren folded her hands in her lap. “It’d be wise not to insult me. You haven’t exactly been the most pleasant patient to deal with so far.”

“I meant no offense,” he said, almost chastised.

“Good.” At least he was being civil, if not curt. “Not everyone is as forgiving as I am, you know. Do you understand how lucky you are that I showed up?”